Substance Quotes - Page 8

• Heat may be generated and destroyed by certain processes, and this shows that heat is not a substance.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  May, Heat, Process

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• But suppose we take the noun 'truth': here is a case where the disagreements between different theorists have largely turned on whether they interpreted this as a name of a substance, of a quality, or of a relation.

  J. L. Austin

  Names, Quality, Different

  "Philosophical Papers" by J. L. Austin, James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, 3rd ed., New York: Oxford, (p. 73), 1979.

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• The metaphysics of substance. The strange feeling which comes over us when we sense: this is skin - this is bone - all in a single vision that is completely unearthly. The dreaminess of our existence mixed at the same time with the indescribably sweet illusion of reality.

  Max Beckmann

  Sweet, Reality, Feelings

  Stephan Lackner, Max Beckmann (1983). “Max Beckmann”, Crown Pub

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• In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch. Reality to us is thinghood , consisting of substances that occupy space; even God is conceived by most of us as a thing. The result of our thinginess is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as a thing, as a matter of fact.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Eye, Reality, Space

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1955). “Insecurity of Freedom”, p.80, Macmillan

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• Our words are, as a general rule, filled by the people to whom we address them with a meaning which those people derive from their own substance, a meaning widely different from that which we had put into the same words when we uttered them.

  Marcel Proust

  People, Different, Our Words

  Marcel Proust, Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, Dennis Joseph Enright (1996). “In Search of Lost Time: Within a budding grove”, Vintage Classics

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• The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.

  Mark Twain

  Pride, Hands, Ideas

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.831, Jazzybee Verlag

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• A fiery shield is God's Word; of more substance and purer than gold, which, tried in the fire, loses nought of its substance, but resists and overcomes all the fury of the fiery heat; even so, he that believes God's Word overcomes all, and remains secure everlastingly, against all misfortunes; for this shield fears nothing, neither hell nor the devil.

  Martin Luther

  Believe, Fire, Devil

  Martin Luther, Alexander Chalmers (1857). “The Table Talk of Martin Luther”, p.19

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• I like to avoid concessions to faint-heartedness. One can never tell where that road may lead one; one gives way first in words, and then little by little in substance too.

  Sigmund Freud

  Giving, May, Littles

  Sigmund Freud (2015). “Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego: Illustrated & Psychology Glossary & Index Added Inside”, p.58, eKitap Projesi

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• No creature hath the like resemblance to the divine nature, as light hath. He doth not only dwell in light, but he is light. Light is a pure, bright, clear, spiritual, unmixed substance. God is infinitely so.

  Matthew Henry

  Spiritual, Light, Divine

  Matthew Henry (1833). “The Miscellaneous Works of the Rev. Matthew Henry: Containing in Addition to Those Heretofore Published, Numerous Sermons Now First Printed from the Original Mss. : an Appendix on what Christ is Made to Believers,in Forty Real Benefits,by Philip Henry... : Funeral Sermons for Mr. and Mrs. Henry, by the Rev. Matthew Henry : Funeral Sermons on Mr. Matthew Henry, by W. Tong, John Reynolds, and Dr. Williams”

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• And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene,The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,Will turn its private substance into green,And young shoots spread upon our inner world.

  Theodore Roethke

  Long, Mind, World

  Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.28, Anchor

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• The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas. It dispersed many difficulties, harmonized many discords, and yea, more! It shewed the substance of Universe as a simplicity of Light and Life, manners to compose atoms, themselves capable of deeper self-realization through fresh complexities and organizations, each with its own peculiar powers and pleasures, each pursuing its path through the world where all things are possible.

  Aleister Crowley

  Organization, Ideas, Light

  "Magick Book IV: Liber ABA". Book by Aleister Crowley. Appendix VI: A few principal rituals - Liber Reguli, 1936.

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• The work of the painter, the poet or the musician, like the myths and symbols of the savage, ought to be seen by us, if not as a superior form of knowledge, at least as the most fundamental and the only one really common to us all; scientific thought is merely the sharp point more penetrating because it has been whetted on the stone of fact, but at the cost of some loss of substance and its effectiveness is to be explained by its power to pierce sufficiently deeply for the main body of the tool to follow the head.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Loss, Effectiveness, Musician

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.121, Penguin

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• What the philosophers once knew as life has become the sphere of private existence and now of mere consumption, dragged along as an appendage of the process of material production, without autonomy or substance of its own.

  Theodor Adorno

  Life, Spheres, Philosopher

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.15, Verso

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• Transient bodies are only subject to destruction through their substance and not through their form, nor can the essence of their form be destroyed; in this respect they are permanent.

  Maimonides

  Essence, Body, Destruction

  Moses Maimonides (2016). “Guide for the perplexed”, p.1008, Moses Maimonides

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• No form remains permanently in a substance; a constant change takes place, one form is taken off and another is put on.

  Maimonides

  Taken, Form, Constant

  Moses Maimonides (2016). “Guide for the perplexed”, p.1008, Moses Maimonides

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• The corporeal element in man is a large screen and partition that prevents him from perfectly perceiving abstract ideals; this would be the case even if the corporeal element were as pure and superior as the substance of the spheres ; how much more must this be the case with our dark and opaque body. However great the exertion of our mind may be to comprehend the Divine Being or any of the ideals, we find a screen and partition between God and us.

  Maimonides

  Dark, Men, Mind

  Moses Maimonides (2012). “The Guide for the Perplexed”, p.264, Courier Corporation

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• Now I wonder what our knowledge has in common with God's knowledge according to those who treat God's knowledge... Is there anything else common to both besides the mere name? ...there is an essential distinction between His knowledge and ours, like the distinction between the substance of the heavens and that of the earth.

  Maimonides

  Names, Heaven, Essentials

  Moses Maimonides, Aeterna Press (1948). “The Guide for the Perplexed”, p.471, Aeterna Press

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• I cannot believe that any man who deserved fame ever labored for it; that is, directly. For, as fame is but the contingent of excellence, it would be like an attempt to project a shadow, before its substance was obtained.

  Washington Allston

  Believe, Men, Excellence

  Washington ALLSTON, Richard Henry DANA (Author of “Two Years before the Mast.”.) (1850). “Lectures on Art, and Poems ... Edited by Richard Henry Dana, Jr”, p.174

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• I have way too many commitments. I get pulled in too many directions and I never seem to be able to satisfy anybody. People get turned on by knowing a celebrity, even my friends and family. They feel that there's something exciting about me, but in reality there's no substance to it. People in airports just hold on to me expecting something and it seems that I always come up empty. It's frustrating because I'm trying to please everybody, and ya just can't do that ... at least I can't.

  Tim Allen

  Commitment, Reality, Airports

  "An interview with Tim Allen". Interview to Laugh Factory Magazine, www.timallen.com. 1994.

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• In [Aristotle's] formal logic, thought is organized in a manner very different from that of the Platonic dialogue. In this formal logic, thought is indifferent toward its objects. Whether they are mental or physical, whether they pertain to society or to nature, they become subject to the same general laws of organization, calculation, and conclusion - but they do so as fungible signs or symbols, in abstraction from their particular "substance." This general quality (quantitative quality) is the precondition of law and order - in logic as well as in society - the price of universal control.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Order, Law, Organization

  "One-Dimensional Man" by Herbert Marcuse, (p. 136), 1964.

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• This whole which is visible in different ways in bodies, as far as formation, constitution, appearance, colors and other properties and common qualities, is none other than the diverse face of the same substance a changeable, mobile face, subject to decay, of an immobile, permanent and eternal being.

  Giordano Bruno

  Color, Quality, Decay

  "Cause, Principle, and Unity". Book by Giordano Bruno, 1584.

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• Of the eternal corporeal substance (which is not producible ex nihilo, nor reducible ad nihilum, but rarefiable, condensable, formable, arrangeable, and "fashionable") the composition is dissolved, the complexion is changed, the figure is modified, the being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle persevering which was always the one material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible.

  Giordano Bruno

  Principles, Elements, Figures

  "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast". Book by Giordano Bruno, 1584.

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• Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing is changed, is formed or deformed, but there always remains only that thing which cannot be a subject of dissolution, since it is not possible that it be a subject of composition, and therefore, either of itself or by accident, it cannot be said to die.

  Giordano Bruno

  Said, Changed, Composition

  "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast". Book by Giordano Bruno, 1584.

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• In alchemical treatises, the formula L'Oeuvre au Noir ... designates what is said to be the most difficult phase of the alchemist's process, the separation and dissolution of substance. It is still not clear whether the term applied to daring experiments on matter itself, or whether it was understood to symbolize trials of the mind in discarding all forms of routine and prejudice. Doubtless it signified one or the other meaning alternately, or perhaps both at the same time.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Mind, Alchemist, Prejudice

  "The Abyss". Book by Marguerite Yourcenar, Author's note, p. 367, 1968.

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• If we might reverently imagine ourselves scheming beforehand what kind of book the Book of God ought to be, how different would it be from the actual Bible! There would be as many Bibles as there are souls, and they would differ as widely. But in one thing, amid all their differences, they would probably agree: they would lack the variety, both in form and substance, of the Holy Book which the Church of God places in the hands of her children.

  Henry Parry Liddon

  Children, Book, Hands

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